The Bush Inn

K-Nine was resting. He was in the cloister room of the TARDIS listening to some relaxing music and sipping a glass of WD40. He loved this room, constructed mainly from marble with ornate columns and arches covered with ivy. It was cool with subdued lighting, and was an ideal place to escape from daily life.

Suddenly there was a loud noise ... the cloister bell … it's deep tone echoed throughout the ship, permeating every room and corridor.

K-Nine left the cloister room and trundled around the vast, almost infinite corridors of the TARDIS, but he could not find his master or mistress anywhere. Finally, he made his way back to the console room. The control panel in the centre was humming gently as normal, but the sound of the cloister bell was still ringing in his ears. Then it stopped.

The TARDIS landed with a gentle bump. K-Nine checked the instruments to see where they had landed. The map on the monitor screen showed they were in a town called Cwmbran in South Wales on the planet Earth. He flicked a switch on the console, and the TARDIS doors swung open. Once outside, his sensors detected an unusual power source which was coming from a small white building just down the lane on his left. He decided to investigate .

He rolled slowly and rather nervously into the establishment which was known as the Bush Inn. He surveyed what was known locally as the upper bar, presumably because it was higher up than the lower bar.

... there was a machine for dispensing expensive sticks of addictive nicotine and dried leaves wrapped in thin paper.

... a strange circular board divided into twenty numbered segments into which two people took it in turns to throw small pointed projectiles.

... a brightly lit object on the wall which seemed to be the source of odd noises coming out of a number of small black boxes attached to the walls at various points in the room.

... a small table covered in a green felt-like material on which were a number of coloured balls. Two people were attempting to 'lose' these balls down the six holes around the periphery of the table by means of poking a white ball with a long thin wooden stick.

... a number of chairs and tables, some occupied by assorted members of the human race, who were generally talking, drinking or eating salty snack foods.

K-Nine rolled slowly up to the bar, looked upward and found a beautiful smiling face gazing down at him. The phrase "Verse 18" leapt into K-Nine's mind and he was deeply puzzled …